I spent most of last week at the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) International Conference and Expo (8000+ attendees) here in Washington, DC at the very impressive Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The days were chocked full of interesting sessions, interesting people and interesting observations.
- The organizers did a great job. A month prior to the conference, they set up a LinkedIn group for conference speakers as a forum to ask questions and share ideas/best practices. I was asked to post a Presentation Tip of the Day 2-3 times a week. Having a specific place for speakers to congregate virtually generated good discussion (PowerPoint and how to be interactive with a large audience were hot topics) and also forged connections prior to being on-site.
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Once at the conference, the organizers provided a Speakers' Room, equipped with screens so presenters could rehearse presentations and even use other speakers as a mock audience. We all know how challenging it is to find the time to rehearse so facilitating that by having a dedicated space, populated by other folks with similar needs, is a grand idea.
- Twitter most definitely had a presence. There were hashtags set up for the conference (#astd09) and for the local chapter (#metrodcastd) and there was a steady stream of tweets sharing session information, impressions, questions and meet up details. What was lacking, however, was a public display of the Twitter stream where people could see it as they were moving about the Convention Center. This would have been a great way to share ideas and engage more people in the conversation going on in the back channel.
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An interesting experiment was conducted by one of the speakers, Doug Caldwell. He projected the live Twitter stream during his session. Doug set up a hashtag ahead of time and populated it with tweets encouraging people to attend. Yours truly was his assistant/scribe during the session. We used Tweetchat as the platform to gather and project the hashtag tweets. Since none of the attendees were tweeting, I ended up capturing key messages and participant comments for the Twitter stream. Couple of lessons: the scribe has to be familiar enough with the content to determine what the nuggets are; figure out how to toggle back and forth between the big screen and the laptop screen before the session; recognize that there is a several seconds delay between hitting enter on Tweetchat and having the tweet appear in the stream. Participants, although very engaged in their workshop activities, did notice when one of their comments hit the big screen. This is also a great way to archive the 'in the moment' participant comments for future sharing or dissemination. Kudos to Doug for experimenting. It was a cool experience and I'm anxious to use Twitter again in a presentation.
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Teleprompters were used for the general sessions, with video screens placed around the hall so everyone could see. It was clear that several of the presenters did not have much experience with the teleprompter. One of the main presenters was extremely good and the contrast was stark. Plea to speakers using teleprompter: please, please rehearse, with teleprompter, more than 10 minutes before your speech.
- In almost every session I attended, presenters ran out of time; they were either trying to cram too much into the allotted time or they had not accounted for questions and dialogue from the audience. When developing a speech or presentation, allocate time for audience questions and comments. The amount of time depends on your topic and the overall duration of your presentation; for example, in a 90 minute presentation, leave a good 15 minutes for questions.
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Session evauations are one of my hot buttons (more on that in a subsequent post). Feedback is the most valuable thing a speaker can get from the audience. So as a speaker, don't skew the audience's opinion (one way or the other) by stating that you're trying to maintain your perfect scores (or some other attempt to influence). By the same token, if you're in the audience, do the speaker the courtesy of providing honest, thoughtful feedback. Don't say the presentation was good if it wasn't; if you have thoughts for improvement, offer them.
Attending a conference is both an exhausting and exhilarating experience. And it is most definitely a juicy learning lab for a presentation trainer!
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